


Coins Have Two Sides

by Reeves_Dove



Category: Elsewhere University (Webcomic)
Genre: Basil is just determined to be hella gay at all times and it is fantastic, Basil is super gay, Basil's dad is a trash fire, Everyone Is Gay, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, I mean it's only "implied" gay romance, I will adjust the rating as necessary, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Multi, Not Beta Read, Or at least none of this cast is straight, Trans Character, What-If, also a lot more than just that, and that's all there is to say about him, but going straight to mature seems excessive right now, but that doesn't make it not terrifying, dem bois will smooch, going with teen and up because eventually, implied racism, in as much as I only got as far as Basil actually noticing Pree exists, moirallegiance is magic, not even actually properly edited because hesitating means I won't post it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-14
Updated: 2018-04-14
Packaged: 2019-04-22 17:00:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14313186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reeves_Dove/pseuds/Reeves_Dove
Summary: Elsewhere University is an interesting place. There are several of it (only one to a world, to a timeline, but this does not reduce or prevent a multitude). In some, there are three students: a girl and two boys. The girl is a Legacy, and one of the boys is not human and never will be, for all that the girl claims him as best friend and brother and loves him fiercely.In others, there are four students: a girl and three boys (which soon becomes two girls and two boys, partway through their first year); half of this set are twins, and the first girl is best friends with one, not quite as close with the other. All four are human, for all that the first girl is still a Legacy.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Basil and his twin are Limesparrow's OCs. I just write down the weird AU possibilities that we come up with for our dorks.
> 
> This is a companion, but not a B-side, to my other writing in this 'verse, "Ohana Means Family". Technically, this variant came first, for one. For another, the titles mean things; a B-side would imply that the A-side is perhaps superior or intended to be experienced first, and that isn't the case. A coin has two sides; neither side is better, only different.

Zeimah's mother never talked much about her father. Most of what she says sort of makes it sound like he's probably dead. Zeimah says, when she talks about it, that she thinks her dad was probably a soldier, because of the cheque that arrives every month. But she doesn't talk much about it either, she's happy enough with the way her family is.

She grows up in a small town, next door to two boys, and they end up friends. Some people say that it's only to be expected, growing up next to another kid like that; that she didn't have siblings of her own, so she went looking for other playmates. Some people make jokes, sometimes, where the kids can overhear that Zeimah and Basil are going to end up marrying each other when they grow up.  
_(Those jokes stop after it becomes clear that Basil won't ever marry a girl. This happens when he's ten. His father isn't pleased.)_  
_(The jokes don't really stop. They just change, trying to pair Zeimah and Bailey, trying to claim that the two fight too much for it not to be fated. Zeimah thinks it's just as stupid.)_

It's a small town, and Zeimah's mom makes enough that they could move, could live somewhere else. Somewhere kinder to people who don't turn lobster-red in the sun. Somewhere kinder to children who struggle to understand the rules and remember things and keep track of time. Somewhere without ghosts from the Civil War. But they live here, in a house that's old enough it ought to be declared historical and has bones that are more iron than wood. Zeimah's mom doesn't explain why she chose to live here; she didn't grow up here, as far as people recall.

Zeimah and Basil (and Bailey) all grow up, more or less okay. (Less, rather than more, really. They're alive, anyways. They're in more pieces than they should be, but they can still function, can still look for the way out, can still _run_.) Bailey and Basil don't get along so well, by high school; it's like pulling teeth just to get Bailey to admit he's related to Basil at all, and any kindness or favour he does for Basil is hiding thorns or looks like it should be. Zeimah and Bailey don't get along so well either; it drives her mad, that Bailey can be so vicious to his own brother, and she refuses to try and understand the reasons for it - they're stupid reasons, and she won't listen to them.  
She fights a lot of classmates, over how Basil is treated. She is not effective in fighting Bailey, because he refuses to fight back and is not so thrown by the fact that this won't stop her that he cannot keep her at bay. (It isn't that hard. Neither of the twins are strong, but he is still enough stronger than her and his arms are longer; all he has to do is grab her wrists and keep her at arm's length. It doesn't stop her from kicking him in the shins, but she looks stupider doing that.)

It does not make her popular. Basil is not popular either.  
They survive anyways.

Basil makes valedictorian, and immediately makes it clear that he has no intention of staying in this small town or anywhere near it. _(It is not hard to make this clear, when his speech consists of "fuck this and fuck all of you".)_ Neither of the other two have any more intention of staying, although Bailey insists he's looking at a college nowhere near them.  
_(He isn't lying. In another universe, one where they are never noticed by Elsewhere University, it even actually happens.)_

All three of them get acceptance letters from Elsewhere University. Zeimah is the least surprised, her mother is an alumnus there. Her mother gives them advice, makes sure that she is packed off with cast-iron cookware and iron jewelry.  
Going to Elsewhere University is as much a choice as it isn't. Zeimah doesn't have anywhere else that will readily accept her grades; Basil helped her to study, and she is smart, but she has difficulties that mean her grades are merely passable. _(Except for art. She has never struggled there. She would have done well in music, too, but her mother refused to let her take any classes where she would learn to play an instrument. This was considered a minor strangeness, at the time.)_ Similarly, Basil has excellent grades - but needs a scholarship in order to afford studying anywhere besides the local community college, because his father does not have to threaten to withhold tuition money when there is no money at all to pay for college for even one child. Bailey does not have his brother's excellent grades, but he is looking for a sports scholarship; he was more for track than football, but he made an effort to meet the expectations their father had.

They are all offered scholarships. Zeimah's is based on being an alumni child, a Legacy. Basil's is for his excellent grades and an essay he does not recall writing or submitting. Bailey's is for sports.  
They all accept. The alternative is trying to find somewhere else to go, some other scholarship to take, and hope that it is far enough from this tiny little town that hates what will not fit the boxes it cherishes. None of them see a point in trying to roll those dice _(and Bailey does not admit that he cannot find anywhere else willing to accept his grades and offer a scholarship)_. Elsewhere is sufficiently far away, even if Bailey thinks the requirement to pick a nickname is ridiculous.

Zeimah's mother moves, to be closer to the university and give them somewhere easier to visit on weekends and holidays, so that the twins' mother will not worry so much. _(She is as sick of this town as the rest of them. The point of moving here, as far away as possible, and living in a house of iron nails and iron bones, has been made moot with the arrival of the acceptance letters.)_


	2. Chapter 2

When they arrive on campus, they are Houndstooth and Featherfall/Evard/Mage Hand (because he is a massive nerd, and is careful to rotate his nicknames to avoid getting too attached to any of them) and Halo (who went along with the tradition grudgingly and picked the first option that came up on a random page of the dictionary website that wasn't too girly, too hard to spell, or too hard to pronounce). Evard and Halo are not roomed together, on request; they are still twins and identical, but they make an effort to be distinct from each other - it's not that hard when Halo has already been making an effort for years and Evard has scars Halo does not.

Evard is the only one of them to select his major quickly, declaring a double major for CompSci and English. Houndstooth picks up a theatre class, and takes as many textile classes and art classes as she can when still undeclared. Halo settles onto the school sports team and does not declare until the next year, becoming an accounting major.  
 _(Quietly, halfway through freshman year, Halo admits to Houndstooth and Evard that she isn't a boy. That her Name isn't Bailey. This happens off campus, in a safe place. They do not tell her Name. They do not advise her to change her nickname. They support her, and arrangements are made with the RA; she rooms with Houndstooth afterwards.)_

Houndstooth is good at knitting and takes to weaving like a duck to water. She is decent at drawing and painting - skilled enough that she does well in her classes. She makes art like other people breathe, a pair of painted aluminum needles in her hands as often as she can get away with except for when her hands are filled with pencils or paintbrushes or pastels. _(She would use a drawing tablet - her mother could have afforded one - but she grew up with traditional media forms and is too restless to take the time to relearn how to work in a different medium.)_

It gets noticed.  
This is dangerous, in Elsewhere. It is not safe to be _known_  to be good at crafting, at art, in Elsewhere. There is a limit to how safe following the rules can keep you, when you are known as a skilled artist there.

There is a party in their first year there, after mid-terms are over. "Celebrate that you passed, or drown your sorrows for having failed," they are told. Halo is tired and has no interest in getting drunk. Evard has a project to work on. Houndstooth decides to go anyways, because she cannot stick fo Evard's side forever, she needs other friends and this might be a way to make some; she wants to do something besides sitting in her room and watching movies as she knits, anyways. She promises Evard and Halo that she will text when she leaves the party and when she gets home safely.

She does not text them. This is before she and Halo share a room, but only just; the RA had not yet approved the room switch and they were waiting on permission.  
To all appearances, she made it home safely. To all appearances, she is in class the next day - bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and all those other euphemisms for being disgustingly cheerful and awake despite the early hour the class is at and the late hour the party ended at last night.  
'To all appearances' is not sufficient to fool Evard, who sits next to Houndstooth in class and has known her since kindergarten; he knows the shape of her face and the way her smile should go and her eyes should look, he knows the sound of her voice almost as well as he knows Halo's, and none of the jewelry she is wearing is the iron her mother gave her (and she didn't bring any other kind to campus). The person sitting next to him is not Houndstooth _(is not-Houndstooth)_  and that they are playing the role of her _(eyes too bright, hair too much a solid shape, laugh too sharp and short; too much like barking)_ only makes him more upset.

He is not comforted or soothed by what the RA tells him, when he tries to report it. It sounds too much like he is being blown off; his friend is _missing_  and a doppleganger has taken her place, and he is told to stay calm and wait to see if she returns to normal within a week or two, "sometimes people get a little weird after mid-terms are done, college can be stressful".  
 _(There are no apologies afterwards, but there are explanations. The RA did not know how much he knew, how Involved he was, and was hesitant to be blunt about things in case Evard decided not to wait until they could get the time to go after her themselves; they did not want to risk him breaking the treaty or going in after her and needing rescue himself.)_

Not-Houndstooth stays for nearly a week, and Evard neglects his schoolwork in favour of trying to find out more about what the hell has replaced his friend and how to get her back. _(Halo is not happier, but cannot convince him to calm down; she has never been good at that.)_ Houndstooth staggers into the dorm and if Evard was planning anything that would have violated the treaty, no one can ever do more than speculate about it; he is entirely too busy with making sure she gets up the stairs safely, with settling her onto his bed _(he doesn't know if not-Houndstooth has used Houndstooth's bed but he washes the bedding anyways, apologizing afterwards for having accidentally faded her quilt with bleach)_ so that she can sleep and with trying to pry her fingers off of a carved wood basket full of roving that is in colours that don't match any palette that does not include elements found only in Else and of fibre that does not come from any mundane plant or animal he can identify. (He does not knit, but he knows her; he knows what mundane roving looks like, and there is none in that basket.)  
He is busier with bandaging her hands, bruised and bloody, after he gets her to let go of the basket. The RA arrives and checks her over, helps with wrapping her hands up; Evard is told to take her to the medical clinic once Houndstooth is able to walk, to ensure there isn't any permanent damage from three subjective months of tailor-work. Houndstooth insists he stay, when the RA talks with her about what happened; this is how Evard and Halo learn that 1) the reason for the tradition behind nicknames is that the Gentry are very much real and extant on campus (and Elsewhere, which is and is not quite the same as Elsewhere University), 2) there are some things which are more dangerous to be, while attending Elsewhere, and anything which is inclined towards creativity and creation is one of them, 3) Houndstooth won't be the same afterwards, but she will (probably) not suffer too much as long as her hands get checked out and are given time to rest and heal.

Houndstooth is more careful about wearing her iron, after that. She is meticulous about keeping salt on her and ensuring the salt lines in her room are kept up. The approval for Halo to switch rooms and move in with Houndstooth follows shortly after Houndstooth returns, and it makes it more awkward for Evard to visit Houndstooth but he's relieved that someone he can trust will be there to watch her and keep her from forgetting that she's not allowed to try and knit until she's medically cleared for that.

Evard does not quite start pursuing the forbidden major, afterwards. Not quite. He is too curious, too fascinated, too intent on finding out all he can to try and keep Houndstooth safe (or, at least, to better arm himself if and when she is Taken again).  
(Because all three suspect that it's less a matter of 'if' and more a matter of 'when', should her hands heal properly. (And they do.) She is already known as skilled, as creative; she cannot suddenly hide her talents and be believed. She can be more careful with drawing, certainly - she can refrain from taking any more classes in that vein, and avoid drawing anywhere but in the safety of her room in a circle of salt and iron - but she can't _not_  knit; it will be three more years at this point before she is diagnosed properly, but her ADHD requires her to do _something_  with her hands if she is to focus in class and knitting works as well as anything else in as much as it's less distracting than constantly clicking a pen. They all know she will not become less skilled or talented, that it will be actively painful for her to not try and see how far she can go before she hits the limits of what she's capable of in terms of elaborate work. All of this means that it is unlikely to be 'if', but 'when'.)

But he still asks questions he should not. He still buys a pair of glasses from Cats Eye and wears them in public (and gets good at Seeing without seeing, or seeing without Seeing). He still registers for a double major, becoming an English major in addition to his CompSci allegiance. He is still too willing to smile and flirt with any attractive young man, and to write and read poetry in public. _(He has always had a way with words, just as Houndstooth has always had clever fingers.)_  
He is careful, walking the line between truly falling into pursuit of the forbidden major and what can be excused as self-interest and curiosity.  
It is still just as dangerous as Houndstooth existing on campus at all.


	3. Chapter 3

There is a bet that Houndstooth and Evard like to make, with those who are Involved and who look at Evard and (justifiably) have doubts over how human he is. Evard is almost unnaturally thin and if he doesn't subsist entirely on coffee, then it is only because Houndstooth chivvies him into actually using his meal plan card for actual food.

The bet is always low stakes. Nothing important, nothing anyone can't afford to lose. A muffin, a meal from the cafeteria, a bottle of ibuprofen from the campus store, a box of glass buttons.

The bet is always the same: that Evard can drink a cup of salted coffee, down to the dregs, and suffer no more harm from it than any normal human should.

They have never lost this bet.  
Houndstooth will point out, to anyone who is polite and asks, that Evard wears iron and carries salt and has, in fact, _always_  been more interested in talking than eating.  
They only make this bet with people who are rude enough to insist that he is still too thin to be fully human. That makes it fair enough, really. They do not force anyone to participate in the bet.

Evard has still gained a bit of a taste for salted coffee.

This does not prevent him from getting attention, because he is clever-tongued and fond of the crows _(and the crows notice him back, for all that he is not Feathers)_ and too willing to read poetry and stories aloud. Sometimes poetry and stories that he has written.  
The attention grows heavier, the morning he is heard singing in the shower. He has never sung before, not on campus; he is reluctant to sing in front of an audience at all and Houndstooth will not coax him into it here, where it will gain unsafe notice. It is not the bathroom tiling that makes his voice good, and They know this.

And he asks too many questions, is too willing to flirt, is seen wearing Cats Eye's glasses. He is loud, filling the space with the sound of his own voice as if he is insistent on forcing people to acknowledge that he has a right to be there, a right to exist.

It gets attention.

This is not beneficial.

One of the Gentry notices him. Flirts back, after a fashion. Asks for pretty words, asks for more when they are given. Asks for Evard to sing for him, and becomes insulted when he is refused.

_(Evard tries to be polite, but he is used to being crude and shocking, and he is flustered by the request. His refusal is polite but this does not prevent the Gentlefolk who asked from choosing to claim insult anyways.)_

If Evard will not sing for him, then Evard will sing for no one. Will _speak_  for no one. Will make no sounds, will be utterly silent.  
  
And so it is. Not by choice. But Evard is muted, after that, quite literally; he cannot talk, he makes no sounds _(but what he wears does, which makes his silence all the more unnerving)_.

Halo is equal parts sympathetic and exasperated (and terrified). Other students who are Involved see it as an object lesson.  
  
The first thing Houndstooth does is get Evard a set of iron bells to wear, so that he does not need to rely on his own noise to get attention if he needs it.


	4. Chapter 4

The second thing Houndstooth does is stop talking too. At first, it is assumed she is doing this in solidarity; that she will slip up and say a word.

The assumptions stop when she goes to Lavender and Sage, and - still saying nothing, the whole exchange between the three is written out in pencil on a spiral-bound notebook - comes away with a box of dye cakes and fibrecrafting notions. That she is able to leave with anything at all says volumes.

She spins some of her roving, after that - not anything from the basket she was given, this is first-shearing lambswool, from a lamb she has hand-raised and sheared herself. It is spun into fine, fine thread and dyed and she starts weaving. For a month ( _it is said, afterwards, anyways, although surely the work must have taken longer than that)_ she weaves, fitting it in around every other obligation; she is silent in class, in public, in private. She does not speak.

A few people get close enough to see the work on the loom and speculate that she is weaving a shawl or a wall hanging. The notions - tiny glass beads that glow in the light like embers, when she holds them - are used to create images of swans turning into men and men turning into swans.  
Not many people get close enough, not many people are comfortable looking at this loom at all. In Elsewhere, your emotions influence the things you make, and even still on the loom, still barely started, the shawl _**radiates fury**_.

_(It occurs to some who are Involved that they have never actually seen Houndstooth angry. Any other emotion, certainly - but she has never seemed more than mildly irritated or exasperated before now. This fact is placed next to the one that she got a box of supplies from Lavender and Sage, and that everything she made for Evard and Halo was freely given and had love in every stitch, and that her mother is a successful alumnus. Those who consider these facts give Houndstooth a wide berth afterwards; whatever she is planning, they do not want to be in the vicinity.)_

When the shawl is done, she folds it up and gathers a few other things before grabbing a skein of yarn and a pair of rowan knitting needles and heading down to the cafeteria. A table is claimed and she sits, and knits, and waits.

People come by. She nods to some. She ignores others. To one, who stops and asks if they can sit with her, she smiles politely and shakes her head, speaking for the first time since she started weaving that shawl, "I'm waiting for the one who took my best friend's voice. I have business with him."  
She sits and she knits and she waits.  
Time passes. This is fine, she does not have classes today; she will not be late, and the cafeteria is as close to neutral as any area on campus.  
The pattern repeats, as she works yarn that belongs to no mundane creature into a shawl that holds a sunset. She is waiting for the Gentlebeing who took Evard's voice, and the items she has placed on the table are not available for purchase; they are earmarked for Someone she has business with.

Time passes.

The not-boy that flirted with Evard and asked him to sing approaches the table. "I heard that you believe we have business."  
  
"You heard accurately. You took something," she does not say _stole_ , her anger is hot but it is safely contained and she is not stupid, "which belongs to someone who is mine. I would like to trade with you, to have it returned." She does not look directly at him, and the soft 'toc' of wooden needles moving a little too fast continues as the sunset shawl grows.

"Would you, now? And what do you seek, and what is offered that I should give up anything I hold?" His smile is terrible to see, for all that she does not look.  
  
"You took the voice of the boy who is sometimes called Evard and sometimes Featherfall and sometimes Mage Hand. In exchange for its return, in a form he can use to restore it to himself, I can offer only what my own hands have made." She must be careful not to be falsely humble, but it will not help to brag about her own skills either. It is not quite a knife edge, but the line is still there.  
  
"And what did your hands make?" He looks over the items on the table, giving every impression that he has no interest in them.  
  
"A drawing of a creature that no one I know has ever seen alive. A bracelet of beads and knotted cord. A piece of embroidery made for someone I have never known." She must be careful in her phrasing, and it is hard to balance that and the pattern for the sunset shawl in her head; it helps that she transcribed the pattern onto her phone, which rests on her knee.  
  
"Is that all?" He refrains from looking too close at the swan shawl; it still radiates ** _fury_** , and the tiny glass beads she was given by Lavender and Sage look like embers under the light.  
  
"It is not. My hands also made a shawl, the wool sheared by my hands from a yearling lamb I raised, the wool spun by my hands and dyed by my hands and woven by my hands. The beads and dye I did not make, but was freely given, and I sewed every bead in place with my own hands. From when I first spun the wool to when I placed the last bead, no words passed my lips."

This is sufficient that he cannot continue to feign disinterest. She made a willing sacrifice of her voice, during the creation of the swan shawl, and there would be power and value in that even if her work were not known as quality. But he cannot hand her an advantage either.   
He looks at the other items instead: a pencil crayon drawing of a feathered dinosaur; a bracelet of novice yarn _(her first efforts at hand-spinning)_ and carved teeth from Jimothy set between tigerseye beads; an embroidered square of canvas reading "Happy Father's Day".  
  
The needles click as he takes his time. The crowd that has gathered (for of course there is a crowd) watches Houndstooth bind off the sunset shawl and set it down on her bag, before she stood and picked up the swan shawl, shaking it out and letting the whole of it be seen. The beads made noise as they bounced against each other, not quite like glass-on-glass and not quite like metal either. It is beautiful and he can find no flaw in it when he looks. _(She doesn't make accidental errors in her craftwork any more; not since she was first Taken.)_

It is inaccurate to say that no one can recount how the rest of the bargaining went; it is more accurate to say that no two accounts precisely match each other in the details.   
In the broad strokes, however, there is agreement: the Gentleman left, with all Houndstooth had laid on the table and with the sunset shawl, and Houndstooth left with a pearlescent snail shell on a chain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lavender and Sage are a pair of Involved students at EU, two girls who are best friends. The campus lore says that if your best friend has been Taken (or otherwise messed about with by Them), you can ask them for help and get it - freely given.  
> Of course, if the person you're seeking help retrieving (or uncursing, or whatever went wrong) *isn't* your best friend, asking Lavender and Sage for help will not make things better.
> 
> The closest this 'verse has to a word for moirallegiance is friendship. And Zeimah is incredibly ride-or-die for those she cares about.


	5. Chapter 5

It is wrong to say that there are no witnesses to what happens after that. In Elsewhere, it is likely that someone or something is always watching.

Houndstooth carries the snail shell with her back to Evard, and gives it to him; there is too much risk in returning his voice freely given, when she bartered so much, so she trades knowledge instead: he must learn how to knit from her, so that he will have more than just words to trade if the need ever comes again.

"Please, be more careful," she begs him. They are both curled around each other and he is in tears. "I don't want to have to go in and fetch you back, if They take all of you."

There is nothing in her plea that says she _won't_ , however; nothing that says there will be any debts she won't call in, any limits to how far she will go if he is ever Taken. But she has never liked lying even before arriving at Elsewhere.

He promises her that he will take more care, and he does. _(This does not keep him safe, of course. There is little that can guarantee safety, in Elsewhere.)_

The rest of him is still muted for a time, because she only traded for his voice and not all his sound. But only for a time; the crows take offense to him being so silent-bodied, and steal sounds for him. _(This is not better; he more often sounds like something large and feathered moving, than like a human student, afterwards. But there is no changing it that will not make it worse, if the crows have decided they like you.)_

Life continues.

Houndstooth and Evard and Halo move into an on-campus apartment together, preferring to be able to stay closer. Evard starts a flirtation with a culinary student called Spicebox - not his chosen nickname, but given for his habit of changing his nickname every semester to match whatever herb or spice he is least fond of at that point; he is going by Vanilla when Evard meets him, and quickly changes it to Sriracha to try and avoid the innuendos. It doesn't help, as could be expected considering that Evard chose that nickname for the opportunity to make the sort of tentacle jokes that are inappropriate to tell around his mother (or anyone else's).

It is helped by Houndstooth taking a second major in the culinary track, on top of her first one in textiles (and a minor in costume design), since this gives Evard more excuses to be around Spicebox often.


End file.
